Dear Dr. Boli: You’ve written about many remarkable inventions in your Celebrated Magazine. Who do you think is the greatest inventor of all time? –Sincerely, Miss Prunespigot’s Seventh-Grade History Class.
Dear Young Ladies and Gentlemen: In Dr. Boli’s opinion, the greatest inventor of all time was the unsung hero who first stood in his bathroom, looked down into the toilet, and said, “You know, we have the technology to turn that water blue.”
YOU MAY NOT have been aware that Dr. Boli’s secretary monitors the search-engine terms that bring visitors to his Celebrated Magazine. It is a useful service, for Dr. Boli often uses this information to respond to his readers’ concerns more thoroughly than he could have done without it. The information can also be made into a sort of free-verse poem, composed entirely of terms visitors have entered in their favorite search engines, thus:
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PARENTS! FAMILIARIZE YOURSELVES with the new rating system for computer games. It’s designed to put you in control of what you allow your children to experience.
This game is designed to educate as well as entertain. If it is bought, it will probably never be installed; if installed, it will probably never be played; if played, it will certainly never be played again.
This game is one of the infinite number of slight variations on the ancient Chinese game of Mah Jongg, with a few animations thrown in in a feeble attempt to make it seem new and interesting.
Characters use mild language, invariably addressing one another with politeness and civility. Such games may badly distort a child’s view of the real world.
You have to kill identical trolls in exactly the same way about four hundred thousand times to get to the next level.
Game play involves activities normally associated with minimum-wage jobs, such as flipping burgers or maintaining the grounds of a country club. Some studies suggest that such games are behind a sharp rise in teenage suicide rates.
Minor characters and villains are offensive ethnic stereotypes.
The game abounds in locked doors that open when you solve a puzzle.
Installing the game without crashing Windows is the most challenging part of game play.
No matter how careful you are with the installation, the game will not run. It is therefore suitable for all ages.
Dear Dr. Boli: My contractor says my house needs new “soffit” and “fascia.” I don’t even know what those are. How do I know if I really need them? —Sincerely, A Puzzled Homeowner in Dutchtown.
Dear sir or madam: There is no such thing as a “soffit.” Your contractor is having a little joke at your expense, as Dr. Boli has explained once before in these pages.
“Fascia” are bundles of sticks with an axe in the middle. They were a symbol of authority in ancient Rome, and can often be seen as decorative elemnents on government buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, the Federal Building in downtown Pittsburgh being a good example. They were also adopted, however, by the Fascist party of Benito Mussolini, which indeed took its name from them. Their connotations in modern political life are therefore dubious at best.
Your contractor may or may not be correct in suggesting that your house could be improved by the addition of a few decorations here and there, but Dr. Boli questions his taste. At any rate, your contractor may be qualified to make recommendations on the basic maintenance of the house, but Dr. Boli believes that aesthetic decisions such as this should be left in the hands of the homeowner. If you do not harbor Fascist sympathies, do not be afraid to tell your contractor as much, and insist that you will make all decisions in matters of taste and politics yourself.
“TELL ME AGAIN about the old days, grandmother,” said the sweet little girl sitting by the fire.
“Well,” her grandmother began, her eyes misting over with nostalgia, “we didn’t have trees or any of these modern conveniences. When we wanted wood, we had to make it ourselves. I remember the day old Mitch from down at the mill told your great-grandpappy that there was a new kind of plant that grew wood in its stem, and all you had to do was take it if you wanted it. Pappy laughed himself sick. That was how he died, in fact.
“We had to walk fifteen miles in the snow just to get to school, and then when we got there we had to turn around and walk right back, because schools hadn’t been invented yet.
“The sun didn’t start automatically every morning the way it does now. Pappy had to turn a crank, and some mornings it took forever to get it started. Those were cold mornings, but all we could do was shiver until Pappy got the sun started, because of course no one had thought of blankets in those days.
“The moon was a bit smaller then, and more rectangular. There weren’t nearly as many stars, but then we lived in a poor neighborhood. We didn’t know we were poor, though, because poverty wasn’t discovered till I was eighteen years old. I remember that day, and how cheated we all felt when we finally found out we were poor.
“We didn’t have opposable thumbs back then, either. When we wanted to pick something up, we had to use our toes, so of course we fell down a lot. We couldn’t hold cups, so we had to drink everything through a straw, even hot water, which we couldn’t make into tea or coffee because no one had thought of those things.
“People didn’t live very long in those days, either. The average lifespan was about twenty-one. I myself died when I was nineteen, but I didn’t like it and gave it up after a while. Most people died of starvation, because food hadn’t been invented yet, and the only time we ate anything was when something accidentally fell into our mouths.”
“Goodness, grandmother,” said the little girl, “aren’t you glad you lived to see our modern world, with all its wonderful inventions?”
“Well, I’m not so sure I am,” the kindly old lady replied. “We had to work hard in the old days, but that made us tough. We didn’t have time for dilly-dallying with fripperies like shoes and elbows. I forgot to mention that elbows hadn’t been invented yet, either, so we had to hold our arms straight out like this. But we didn’t complain, because complaining hadn’t been invented yet, either. No, those were the good old days.”
Medical Edition.
Bloodletting. In the year 1784, an acute shortage of leeches (the cause of which remains uncertain to this day) forced the physicians of Bucharest to resort to vampire bats.
Blue Blood. So-called “blue-bloods” are members of an aristocratic class whose primary characteristic is a serious oxygen deficiency in their bloodstreams. Anyone who wishes can become a blue-blood, with all the privileges appertaining to the position, by simply restricting the flow of oxygen to the lungs. You should try it some time.
Cold, Common. When scientists first examined the cold virus under an electron microscope, they were surprised to discover that it was bright green in color and bore markings suspiciously resembling a malevolent smirk.
Consumption. Since the composition of new coloratura arias for popular operas was banned by the League of Nations in 1935, the number of reported cases of consumption in young women has plummeted, and indeed the disease is all but extinct in most civilized nations.
Homeopathy. In 2004, at the instigation of lobbyists from the Dutch Society of Homeopathic Practitioners, the parliament of the Netherlands voted to repeal the laws of physics.
Natural Medicine. Natural medicine is the art of removing the joy from naturally occurring foods. Thus if red wine, green tea, chocolate, or other natural sources of contentment are believed to have some kind of medical value, they must be compressed into tasteless pills. In this way we distinguish medicine from goofing off.
